The Web Standards Project has released the third version of their Acid test. The goal of this test is to create a common testing framework to verify a browser implementation of web standards. The Acid3 test are organized in buckets and stress the following:

• Bucket 1: DOM Traversal, DOM Range, HTTP
• Bucket 2: DOM2 Core and DOM2 Events
• Bucket 3: DOM2 Views, DOM2 Style, CSS 3 selectors and Media Queries
• Bucket 4: Behavior of HTML tables and forms when manipulated by script and DOM2 HTML
• Bucket 5: Tests from the Acid3 Competition (SVG,[5] HTML, SMIL, Unicode…)
• Bucket 6: ECMAScript

From Wikipedia’s entry on Acid3

As of now, no browser passes Acid3. Anomalous Anomaly has tested numerous browser against Acid3 and found some pretty interesting results, namely that the old IE5.5 out performs both IE6 and IE7, but luckily not IE8, which comes in with a paltry 17% of the test passed.

This is a bit of a longer web round up as I am compiling news from a couple of weeks.

• Firefox 3 beta 2 is out - As a web developer, I almost feel obligated to love Firefox. As a general web user, I do love Firefox. It is the best browser in the world and it keeps getting better. Here are some improvements in FF3:
  • A few additional CSS rules
  • The location bar is much niftier
  • Check out the release notes
• A massive hack over the weekend - SQL Injections rear it ugly head again. Make sure you are scrubbing your inputs. Additional info
• Video lecture on the semantic web.

• The Bushies are Editing Wikipedia’s Entry about the Iraq War - I can’t say that I am surprised. When does he get impeached?
• Facebook to let other sites access platform code
• Opera tells EU that Microsoft’s IE hurts the Web - I totally agree with Opera. MS is hurting the progress of the web. It would be nice if modern web development worked like Java was supposed to - write once, run anywhere - at least within web browsers.
• Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team - I admit it, I am a Star Trek fan. I rarely visited the startrek.com web site though. There is no word on why CBS is shutting down the web site. I assume it wasn’t bringing in enough money. Could this be a sign of things to come?
• HTML V5 and XHTML V2 - In a nutshell, HTML5 is designed to make the life of an average developer easier by providing elements and interactions that are typically needed; XHTML2 is an evolutionary step in XHTML that further separates structure from presentation.

I am trying something new. A periodic web round up of stories about the web. Here’s the first installment.

• 
  Users, Web developers vent over IE7 - IE7 is definitely better than IE6. I hope MS keeps developing it and releasing patches and new version often. More browsers from MS might be a problem though. Because browser adoption rate is slow, this would lead to many more versions of MS. The development environment could become increasing complex.
• Google apps get faster on iPhone - I am continually impressed with Google. They scare me, but I am impressed.
• Facebook’s Zuckerberg: ‘We simply did a bad job’ handling Beacon - Is Facebook the new Corvair? Instead of safety devices, we need privacy devices.
• ISPs intercept and modify web pages - Won’t copyright holders be upset that their content is being modified. This is a bad idea by the ISPs. I smell a lawsuit coming.
• Preview of HTML5 on A List Apart - I am not sure what I think of HTML5. It seems okay, but it also seems like tag soup. I also assume its adoption rate will be slow because, from what I can tell, it will break backwards compatibility with existing browsers

That’s it for now. I’ll keep writing roundups as time and stories become available.

First off, let me admit that I don’t know much about the next version of JavaScript (ECMAScript Edition 4) other than it supposedly has some new language features that the current and past versions don’t support. This is no surprise. Unfortunately, it is also no surprise that Mozilla and Microsoft disagree over JavaScript’s evolution. The heart of the disagreement is that Mozilla’s Brendan Eich wants to add functionality and features to the language, Microsoft’s Chris Wilson wants to create a new language.

As a web developer this is disappointing. It has a stench of the days when Netscape and Microsoft both decided that they knew best and implement incompatible HTML rendering engines. I hope both Brendan and Chris work out their differences and create a better language for us web developers to use.

Here are some links to more information about this disagreement:
Proposed ECMAScript 4th Edition – Language Overview (PDF)
IEBlog: ECMAScript 3 and Beyond
Chris Wilson: What I think about ES4.
Print Me: ECMAScript 4, the fourth system syndrome
Brendan’s Roadmap Updates: Open letter to Chris Wilson

A project that I am working on uses the font Creative Block BB for its headlines. I use sIFR for these situations. Unfortunately sIFR3r278 won’t work with Creative Block BB. I have tried creating the swf file from Flash Pro CS3 and from OpensIFR, neither work. More exactly, both encode the swf fine (OpensIFR with a reduced font set) but don’t work within a web page. I have tried other fonts, they work fine.

After a bit more testing I have found that Creative Block BB will render with sIFR2.0.3 but only when the swf file is encoded with OpensIFR. The solution is only partial though because Creative Block BB can’t be encoded with a space character, thus the rendered text doesn’t have a space. This is no good. If I had Fontographer or other font creating software and knew how to use it, I would try adding the space character to the font. I guess it is time to find another font.

I have a client that generally wants to link to additional information by using the phrase “Click here to …” They only want to include the words “click here” in the link with the rest of the sentence left as plain text. This is bad practice for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn’t offer an assurance to the user that the link will take them to a place that they want to be. Second, it doesn’t afford search engines a chance to weigh the link with relevant keywords. Third, links can be scanned within a document, which is a useful feature of screen readers. People with visual disabilities can scan a document for its links so they can quickly find information. Imagine listening to a list of links that all say “Click here.” That is not very useful. Additionally, I personally think it looks amateurish.

Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the Internet, has a style guide for links. The W3C has a page on their site under the guise of Quality Web Tips entitled Don’t use “click here” as link text. Here is another article that I found entitle Why “Click here” is bad linking practice.

The Google Maps team is seeking ideas for a tshirt. Here is my contribution. Tee hee.

I recently launched a new web site for Robert Eatman Enterprises. Robert Eatman is an agent for radio talent, aka on-air personalities, aka DJs. The site represent a pretty strong step in a slightly new direction for Telos Studios. It has a Content Management System based on the Symfony framework. The site is also uses some other modern techniques - more on this in a bit.

A few words about a CMS vs. a framework

A Content Management System is a great way of managing relatively generic content that has no strong semantic relationship to other content. A CMS, like WordPress - a specialized blogging CMS, works well for managing general content, but when you want more advanced possibilities designing the content structures requires more flexibility than a CMS can handle.

In contrast, a framework is not really meant for general content, but, because of a framework’s flexibility, a CMS can be designed into the system. In addition, a framework also allows for very specific datasets. I prefer this. It allows me to design a generic content module and makes it easier to design structures for specific data. This is really handy when design content for membership rosters, tagging data, calendar events, and much more. Essentially, there is a lot of power in a framework that most CMSes don’t allow for without some serious manipulation of the core models.

Techniques uses on Eatman

Beyond the framework based site, the Robert Eatman web site uses these techniques:

• SIFr
• IE PNG Fix
• CSS image replacement

All in all, I am pretty happy with the site and the fact that I am settling on some techniques that should make it easy to create custom web sites much easier.

Web 2.0 has been in full swing for a good year or so now. Lots of modern, advanced frameworks and best practices have come to light to fully take advantage of the Web 2.0 trends. Of those best practices, I would like to briefly address the notion of Progressive Enhancements and Graceful Degradation.

Progressive Enhancement and Graceful Degradation are complimentary practices. If a Progressive Enhancement won’t work, it should degrade gracefully. Some have said that
Progressive Enhancement has its limitations. True. When designing an interface, JavaScript can create such a easy and seamless interface that the non-enhanced version will have to be radically different. Also true. This, in my mind, is when Graceful Degradation comes into play. If a system fails, it must do so while being usable as long as possible. In other words, if JavaScript is disabled, a user interface should still work with traditional client-server requests.

Here is a quick view of some sites and modules that rely on PE and sometimes GD.

The Good

These modules degrade gracefully when JavaScript is disabled.

• Gmail - A standard version is available if JavaScript is disabled.
• Apple Video - When JavaScript is disabled, a message to enable JavaScript is displayed. Plus the option to download the video is available.

The Bad

These sites do not degrade gracefully when JavaScript is disabled.

• CNN Video - Sorry CNN. I love the new site, but video and other things fail when JavaScript is disabled.
• YouTube - Much like Apple, a message is displayed when you don’t have the appropriate technologies, but they do not offer a downloadable version of the video.

All in all this is a tough situation. A lot of time, resources, and money are required to fully implement a well PEGD web site. Trade-offs and priorities will ultimately win the current battle until more frameworks and best practices surface enough to become common place techniques for dealing with complex interaction solutions.